


Gō

by Revenant



Series: Oubliette [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Angst, Character Study, Coping, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Guilt, PTSD Stiles, Post-Nogitsune, Post-Season/Series 03B, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Stilinski Family Feels, mentor!noshiko
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-08
Updated: 2015-07-08
Packaged: 2018-02-10 00:58:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2004852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Revenant/pseuds/Revenant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chess is Stiles' game. He knows how to protect people, not places.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gō

**Author's Note:**

> **prompt: Go.**  
>  **A/N:** I significantly revamped this story because there were a number of scenes that were featured in it that I felt belonged in other sections of this 'verse. I intend to expand this series and any scene that was removed will likely show up in one of the other one-shots I have planned.
> 
> Please leave feedback! Follow me on [tumblr](http://dragons-are-a-girls-bestfriend.tumblr.com/).

His room is a foreign land. It didn't seem possible that something so familiar, a place that was so intrinsically _his_ could ever set his teeth on edge but it does. His blue walls are covered with newspaper clippings and photographs and pieces of notebook paper torn at the edge and covered in his hasty scrawl. Bits of red yarn hang like broken spider webs.

"I, uh. I didn't want to take anything down. Wasn't sure if you still needed any of it," his dad says, hovering in the doorway with his hands in his pockets. "If you need help…"

His mattress has been replaced. His bedding is brand new. Absently, he reaches a hand out, tests the firmness of the bed. The mattress is a better quality than his old one; he can feel the soft give of it beneath his palm. "It's fine." 

His scissors have been removed from the room. So has his X-Acto knife.

His dad rubs the back of his head. He looks lost, shuffling in the doorway. "The extra security's still set up. I'll show you how to disarm it if you—"

"Not yet, okay?" Stiles says. "Just … not yet."

____________________________________

The thought circles in his head, round and round like a ravening bird of prey and he knows it's probably weird but when an idea takes hold Stiles has always been less interested in propriety than in getting a straight answer.

"You said," is how he starts, after she leads him through to her living room. She offers him a seat but he declines, stays on his feet, fidgeting and nervous under her steady gaze. "You said 'more you than the nogitsune'."

Her chin lifts a little but her expression gives nothing away. "I did."

He tries to meet her gaze, fails. "What did you mean by that?" His eyes keep skittering away. He looks at her chin, her nose, the right of her ear – the sofa, the blinds are pulled down over the window, the books on that bookshelf are arranged by category. 

Stiles is terrified she's about to tell him that the nogitsune is still there, inside him. Waiting.

She pours him tea while he fidgets. "Sit." She gestures toward the couch. 

When he looks at it Stiles remembers the last time he sat there, drinking tea. Remembers thinking, 'Allison is dead' and not quite believing it. Remembers hearing the words 'Divine Move' for the first time and knowing he was about as far from the divine as it was possible to be. He'd never felt so hopeless.

The cup is warm in his hands, the taste of tea bitter on his tongue. He winces. He hates chamomile. When he looks up she's watching him. He wonders what she's seeing. 

"How do you feel?" she asks.

People have been asking him that question a lot lately. He tells them he's tired, he's hungry, he's sorry for everything he did. He tells them he's fine. He's getting better. Don't worry about it. 

They're not lies, but they're only half truth.

"Cold," he answers, because he needs to know and if he doesn't tell her exactly the truth then maybe her answer won't be accurate. "I've been cold ever since … ever since we separated. And …" he has to clear his throat, makes the mistake of taking a gulp of tea in an effort to dislodge the stone that's choking him, making it hard to breathe. He coughs, has to set his cup down or risk spilling it. Absently he brings up his fist, covers his mouth. "Hollow," he finishes.

He's so cold that sometimes his skin seems to burn with it. He's frighteningly void, like everything inside of him has been scooped out. He's numb, and sometimes that feels like a blessing, but people look at him like they're bracing themselves, like they're just waiting for him to spill his emotions out onto the ground in front of them. Like they expect him to _have_ emotions, and then he feels like he's letting everyone down all over again because there's always the guilt but beyond that … beyond that…

She smiles, just a flicker of it across her face. There's a tight shadow in it, something as bitter as the tea he's forcing himself to drink. "Then my daughter and your friends have succeeded where I could not." She rests a hand on his wrist where he keeps the cup balanced. "You are yourself."

That's probably where it starts. That brief connection over the pain the nogitsune has caused them, different but the same. A special brand of torture tailored to them, both turned into the unwitting instrument used to destroy what they hold dear. She understands, Stiles realizes, and the shock of it is the first thing he's felt in so long. It's followed by a tsunami of relief that's so strong he almost starts to cry. Almost. Her guilt and his, matched, and for the first time in so long Stiles doesn't feel alone. 

They sit and they drink tea that Stiles can't stand but sips anyway and Mr. Yukimura nods his head in greeting when he comes home but he doesn't speak, doesn't break their silence. He guides Kira away when she stumbles into the room; their whispers are hushed but somehow not intrusive. Stiles hears a door close somewhere else in the house. Mrs. Yukimura refills his cup. 

When his eyes flicker toward the bookshelf he recognizes the wooden box for what it is and he can't keep his reaction hidden. Not from a nine hundred year old fox anyway. Not from someone who knows precisely what that game means. 

Her gaze is steady. She tilts her head, inquisitive. "Do you play?" 

Stiles understands that what she's really asking is whether or not he wants to. 

"I've been teaching myself," he admits to her. He's been studying the game with single-minded focus. Sitting at his desk for hours as he plays online, opening the app on his phone when he goes out. He forces himself to adopt various strategies: sometimes he's reckless, sometimes cautious. When he's not playing the game he's reading about it, studying famous matches, other players, other techniques and strategies. 

Sometimes he sits down and tries to remember the moves from their game: his and the nogitsune. He replays each moment over and over and wishes they'd had the chance to finish it. He would have lost, he knows that, but he has almost a desperate need to know the rest of the nogitsune's strategy. What other moves would it have made? What else did it plan to destroy?

When Stiles meets her eyes there's something there in the dark depths of her gaze that seems understanding. She stands and retrieves the box, carries it to the table. She says, "The game of Gō is better understood when played with an opponent."

____________________________________

Stiles is very good at making life unnecessarily difficult for people. Before the nogitsune he'd never done it intentionally. Mostly chaos had been a byproduct of his curiosity or his boredom. Or his need to keep Scott's wolfy-secret for the sake of protecting his dad.

With the nogitsune, however, Stiles knows he's been outsmarted long before he even realized he was in a battle of wits. By the time he recognizes what's at stake a lot of the damage has already been done. What he has left is a tenuous control of his own body and a tiny corner of his mind that is still his own, so he puts up as much of a fight as he can. 

In retrospect he thinks he ended up in Malia's den in the middle of a freezing cold night because he's so damned good at making things difficult. 

Why? He kept asking, kept wondering. Every time he came into himself enough to realize he was somewhere strange with no memory of how he got there: blocks away from home, in the forest, on top of the hospital. 'I need to cut this wire here' a part of him that wasn't him would think. 'Why?' Stiles would wonder. 

Sometimes he would think, 'no'. 

More and more often, he would think 'no' and 'stop' and 'don't' and 'please please please'.

His mother used to read books on philosophy. It was one of her majors at college. When he was a kid his parents would send him to watch TV after dinner while they cleared dishes, and he remembers turning the volume down so he could listen to them talk. They'd have these weird little debates, his mother's philosophical mind against his dad's analytical. 

Stiles had been too young to learn from her. Too full of beans, she used to say. The few times he tried to think like her his brain would get tangled up in itself, trains of logic winding into an endless snarl like a Gordian's knot, impossible to unravel. He picked up some things, though.

When Stiles thinks of himself it is an inclusive thought: his mind and his body, along with the environment he'd grown up in, and the people, all essential components in the 'I' that meant him. Uniquely Stiles.

Sometimes the mind played tricks, twisted perceptions, seemingly altered reality. He'd seen his mother struggling through that. Her dementia however, was nothing like Stiles' possession. Her mind and her body had always been her own.

Stiles' body had become territory to be claimed. Territory that Stiles did not have rights to simply because it was technically _his_. The nogitsune fought him for it, and it won. Hunkered down in the cold of Malia's den, pushing at Stiles' buttons and twisting him up and spinning him round just to get him to agree, to give-in. It was already in his head, and Stiles ceded ground again and again.

Maybe, he thinks, if he'd been left in that den just a little bit longer. If Melissa and Scott's dad hadn't dragged him out and woken him up, then he would have figured out what the nogitsune was trying to do by forcing him to choose. Maybe Stiles would have had the chance to choose death over possession. 

He thinks about that a lot.

What he did manage was a compromise. How many myths and folktales has he read where the hero plays a game with a trickster, with death, with some opponent? He thinks, if the nogitsune likes games so much it can damned well play one with him, and if Stiles wins the nogitsune can just fuck right off out of his head, and if not … well, Stiles knows better than to think the clever fox would agree if it wasn't already certain it could beat him. Stiles isn't sure it's even possible to outsmart something that is literally inside your head. He doesn't hold out much hope. 

He doesn't need to win, though. He just needs to buy time.

____________________________________

The game starts the moment she opens the door on silent hinges. She is never surprised to see him; always dips her head in acknowledgement of his presence, that same angled-nod that makes her dark hair bob down over her right shoulder. "Mr. Stilinski."

The half-bow he offers in return is awkward and lurching, more a twitchy jerk of his head than anything. He figures she's had nine hundred years to practice being graceful; it's the thought that counts. "Mrs. Yukimura." When he is on the front mat they are always formal: he is her pupil, she is his sensei. This is the ritual.

She steps aside, waits and watches as he slips his shoes off his feet. Sometimes, when pent-up energy, agitation and frustration spur him to kick-off his shoes and rush rush rush like he always does her presence reminds him that this is not the time for haste. This is as close to being still as Stiles thinks he will ever be, as near as he can get to a meditative state. He keeps his movements slow, unlaces his sneakers and slides his shoes from his feet instead of toeing them off.

By the time he finds his way to the living room and settles onto the sectional she's fetched a pot of fresh tea from the kitchen and carried it to the coffee table. There are always two cups set out, waiting. 

Before, when this was new and they circled each other like two animals meeting in the woods, cautious and perhaps overly deferential, Stiles had struggled to keep still, to maintain focus. The tea had been both a practical offering: a drink to wash down a tablet of Adderall, but also the first step in this ritual of memory. The tea is chamomile. He takes a sip and winces, even now that he knows to expect the bitter edge of it. She never offers milk or honey, always steeps the tea long enough that it bites him.

Stiles hates the tea but he keeps a box of it at home in the kitchen pantry. Brews it on nights when the memories threaten to swallow him whole.

At some point the acrid flavor, the horrible reminder of the chamomile, became enough in itself. He no longer needed the extra dose of his medication. The taste alone, imprinted in his mind, brings him into himself whether he wants to be there or not. He remembers the first time he drank this tea, the panic, the guilt, the fear, like a battered animal backed into the corner of a small cage. 

"The tea is to remember," she said once near the start, when he had pleaded for any other beverage she had available, just holy god please not more freaking _chamomile tea_.

He wraps his fingers around the cup and drinks. They are not here to forget the past; they are here to honor it and to learn from it. She says that chamomile soothes the nerves and improves sleep. He has yet to experience any such benefits. This is how they draw a line through the day, outside worries and concerns have no business in this time, all that matters is the ritual and the game. 

This moment of transition lasts as long as there is liquid in their cups. That is the ritual.

They make it up as they go along.

"How is lacrosse?" she asks.

Stiles wonders how much high school sports matter to someone who has lived so long but he never asks her. Instead he says, "I'm benched again." It's hard to standout as a player when you've got werewolves on your team and you've only really played one game (even if it was one hell of a game). "It's good though. I haven't been spending a lot of time with the pack so this … it's good to hang out with Scott and Isaac."

Sometimes he has questions. Sometimes he asks for her advice. 

"What about this one?" He unfolds a piece of thick paper that he takes from the breast pocket of his button-down. He lays it out on the coffee table, waits with his fingers interlocked and braced under his chin as she pulls it closer. 

"Hm," she says, smoothing out the folds.

The design is something he's been working on, the product of his own research and numerous consultations with Deaton and Mrs. Yukimura and with Mr. Argent. Stiles pools all of his accumulated knowledge together into one symbol that he hopes is not too hideous because once this thing is finalized he plans to make it a permanent part of himself. 

If he had a choice he doesn't think he'd ever want a tattoo. He doesn't have a choice, Stiles has not felt at home in his own skin since he crawled up out of the floor of Scott's living room. Maybe that's a lasting feeling and he'll just have to get over it, but he hopes not. He hopes that this will help him. 

"You elected to use the pentagram," she notes absently. 

Stiles peers at the paper. "For demon possession, yeah. Seemed to have more general use than the Aztec sigil to ward off firedemons. Though it's definitely not as cool."

Her lips curve upward slightly and she spares him a brief glance before turning back to the paper. There are a lot of details that he has scrunched into a seven-inch diameter design and most of the elements are layered. A single large pentagram overlaid by a larger triskele, overlaid in turn by a complex knot pattern into which he has worked elements from various ancient cultures.

At the very heart of all of it, half-hidden by the intersection of several patterns is a very specific Kanji. When he catches her looking at it he rubs the back of his neck. "That's uh… it doesn't have any practical application…" 

The gaze she fixes him with is filled with understanding and sympathy, laced with sorrow and perhaps regret. The Kanji is the same one that was burned into the skin behind his left ear: self. He holds her gaze even though he feels stripped bare by it, every vulnerable piece of himself set out to be observed and he tenses, his fingers dancing in an involuntary, agitated pattern on his knees. To mask his discomfort he reaches for his tea, takes a long sip, cringing and then sputtering at the shock of the taste. He never gets used to it. Stiles covers his mouth with his fist as he coughs. 

"This is a very powerful design." 

Chris Argent had described it as 'overkill'. Deaton had stared at it for a few moments and then hummed sort of approvingly. Refolding the paper, Stiles tucks it into his pocket. "I hope so."

With both their cups empty she clears away the tea while he stands and retrieves the board from the shelf. He likes that it's never set out and waiting when he arrives. That it always feels like a choice that neither one of them is obligated to make. 

When she returns he's sitting cross-legged on the floor by the coffee table. She drops a cushion onto the ground and settles on her knees, accepts the polished rosewood go-ke when he hands it to her.

When she removes the lid to find he has given her the black stones she is no longer surprised. Mrs. Yukimura had explained that Gō is a game for both the mind and the soul, and that through play it was possible to learn serenity and harmony. Stiles tries to think about that at the start of every game as he watches her place the first black stone. 

Sometimes it helps. 

Mostly, though, he remembers a different game when a hand, bandaged into a heavy mitt, had pushed the first stone into position and a voice, raspy and deep like the echo in an abyss, had chuckled in anticipation.

____________________________________

He dreams in riddles and metaphors. His nightmare is an open door, is being swallowed up in the roots of a tree, fuelling its growth. Some nights he still wakes up screaming, fighting. He counts his inhales and his exhales, reminds himself to keep breathing. He counts his fingers.

Back when he thought he was struggling with the consequences of his sacrifice Stiles had researched lucid dreaming. He'd been practical, realized that if this was how the darkness was affecting him then it would continue to be a problem for the rest of his life. He wasn't getting any sleep and he was keeping his dad awake and worrying. For all that he's a fan of ignoring problems in the hope that they'll disappear he's not very good at it. He'd been certain that things would only get worse, the line between dream and reality blurring further until he wouldn't ever be certain which was which.

You can't read in dreams, but back then Stiles couldn't read when he was awake, either. His fingers though, that was something he could see and touch, a definite confirmation. He worked at it, trained himself, until he was more sure of this one fact than anything else: you have extra fingers in dreams. 

It's a nervous tick now, a habit.

"How're you doing?" his dad asks him over a stack of pancakes. He speaks in that slow, cautious tone that means he's worried but doesn't want to pressure Stiles to talk.

Stiles keeps counting until he reaches ten. "I'm fine, dad," he says and then picks up his fork, skewering a slice of pancake.

____________________________________

When he brings lunch to his dad at the station Stiles sees broken glass and bodies on the ground. He knows they're not there but he still sees them, and he tries not to look down as he steps over someone he recognizes as deputy Velasquez, who always snuck Stiles candy when he was a kid waiting for his dad to finish his shift, who used to tell Stiles funny stories about being a deputy so Stiles would stop worrying about his dad.

"Brought you lunch!" Stiles says, perhaps a little louder than he needs to if the way his dad starts in his chair is any indication. "Turkey and tomato!" He shakes the bag he's holding up, pretends he hasn't noticed all the empty desks.

He remembers how the nogitsune shoved him down into the darkness, and then let him up again just enough to see: the bodies, the pain, the suffering. Stiles had pleaded, grabbed his friend's hand and asked, "Take his pain" and the nogitsune had smiled, had laughed. All that pain in one place and it knew, stuck close to Scott's side just waiting. Waiting to feed.

If Stiles had only understood then maybe… 

He can't visit Deaton without remembering how it felt to ram a sword through his best friend's gut. Can't visit his best friend without hesitating in the front hall, eyes glued to that spot of floor that he crawled up out of, confused and blind and desperate, so desperate to confirm that it was real, that he'd made it out, that he was himself. "Is it me? Is it me?" he kept thinking again and again, a frantic loop. "Am I alone in my head?" 

The hospital, the school, the station, so many familiar places around town are mired in memory. Bad memories that he'd rather forget.

____________________________________

"It's healing well," she says after he has carefully pulled back the bandage.

"Still burns a little," he tells her, glances down at the angry red skin around the thick black markings. "Turned out okay, though." 

He hates needles, hates pain even more. Stiles had thought that he'd pass out or worse, break-down in a rush of embarrassing tears, but he hadn't. He'd sat there, unflinching. The pain had brought a strange sort of relief. He could still feel something. He wasn't completely numb. 

"No more freaky spirits getting all up in my business," he jokes.

Mrs. Yukimura doesn't laugh. "No. No more freaky spirits," she echoes.

Stiles had tried to convince his dad to get the tattoo. Had tried to convince everyone, really. Now that he knows that possession is a real thing he's all for doing everything in his power to prevent it. "Trust me, guys, it's not fun." 

"It's not all that common," Deaton had advised. "Instances of true possession are very rare."

"Yeah, I feel really special, thanks doc," Stiles had snarked.

They'd given him sad little sideways glances, humored him but ultimately all of them had declined. "Stiles," his dad had started, and then sighed. "Stiles," like everything he needed to say was all wrapped up in that one name. Stiles didn't get it, he didn't understand. 

"Well I'm doing it," Stiles had insisted.

His dad had only nodded. "If you think it's best. If you feel like having that mark will keep you safe, then absolutely, you should do it. Do you need me to sign something?" 

His dad had tried to drive him over to the tattoo parlor but Stiles had managed to put him off. Bad enough that Scott insisted on being there.

"Dude, it's tradition."

"One time doesn't make it a tradition," Stiles had pointed out. 

"Do you think it will work?" Stiles asks her as he carefully nudges a white stone into position. He doesn't dare look up, worries that she'll see everything in his eyes, everything he's been trying to hold back, to keep to himself.

"A mark like that holds great power," she says, and then waits quietly, long enough that he risks a glance at her. She matches his stare with a steady gaze of her own. "Do _you_ believe it will work?"

Stiles presses his fingers against the bandage, feels the burn of sensitive skin underneath. He swallows, licks his lips. He isn't sure. But he hopes.

____________________________________

When summer starts the pack drifts away. It's not planned but it happens, Stiles thinks they were all probably just holding on, gritting their teeth to get to the end of school. They're not actively avoiding each other but they all need time. Maybe that's just him.

He worries about what the nogitsune did or said to Lydia when it had her hostage. Worries that she looks at him and sees it. Or worse, that she looks at him and can't stop thinking about her best friend who's dead now. Maybe Scott sees the demon that skewered him on a sword, maybe that's what everyone sees when they look: all the terrible things he's done.

They tell him that it's not his fault, that it wasn't him, but Stiles remembers it and he has to deal with that. Thinks that maybe he'll never stop dealing with that. So far Stiles can't look at Scott without thinking about how it felt to twist the sword in his gut. He doesn't think he's ever felt as powerful as he did then, as in control.

It makes him sick just remembering that rush.

____________________________________

He draws a mark in chalk underneath their welcome mat. As far as Stiles knows he isn't magic, doesn't possess any special powers. He's just human. But Deaton told him once to believe and Stiles is capable of almost anything when he's desperate.

Right now, he feels pretty desperate. He's forgotten what safety feels like, remembers it only when he wakes up screaming and his dad wraps his arms around Stiles' flailing limbs, draws them tight to his sides and presses Stiles against his chest and tells him everything is alright. 

Stiles has never wanted to believe anything as much as he wants to believe his dad in those moments. "It's over," his dad says. "It's over, Stiles. You're safe."

"Are you sure?" Stiles gasps, frantic. "Are you _sure_?"

He draws the same symbol at the entrance of everyone's home. It's supposed to be a secret but Lydia catches him. She stands at her bedroom window and looks down as he crouches, draws furiously, white chalk on his fingertips. When he's done he stands up, meets her gaze. She doesn't smile, her expression doesn't change, but she nods. Stiles wonders if it's sympathy or gratitude, if it's understanding.

"You need to strengthen the security on this place," Stiles tells Deaton.

Deaton shakes his head. "There's not much that can get passed mountain ash, and I have many precautions in place, I assure you."

"It didn't stop the oni."

"That was an exception, not the rule," Deaton tells him

"Are you going to strengthen your wards or not?"

Deaton offers him a grimacing smile. "You can't let fear rule you." 

It's not fear though, Stiles thinks. It's logic, it's only practical. Deaton should have done all of this after he performed their ritual sacrifice and they woke up the Nemeton. It's all well and good to have a supernatural beacon shining bright in your town, but the local druid should have amped up the local protections. Deaton is still reluctant to embrace his past life, though, and Stiles gets it, but they don't have that luxury. Clearly.

The hospital and the sheriff's department are public spaces, which means that Stiles has to come up with some different protections for them. Maybe there are peaceful supernatural creatures living in Beacon Hills who might need to report a crime, or get some medical attention. He researches. He tries to ignore the memory in his head that whispers, _"I've captured all of the territories on the board, Stiles."_

He reminds himself that in the end, he won.

____________________________________

"I never thought, before, that everything that mattered could be so easily divisible into territories," he says as he stares down at the board, considering. "That's something I learned. I mean, technically I suppose I always knew … I've read Machiavelli and Sun Tzu but …"

"It's not the same," Mrs. Yukimura finishes.

"No. It's really not." Stiles knows chess, knows how to move to protect people not places. Maybe if Scott had been the one possessed he would have faired better, the wolf in him instinctively guarding territory. Stiles is a little embarrassed about how easily he folded when the nogitsune applied pressure, but it knew exactly what to say: "Everyone. _Everyone_ you care about will die."

She meets his gaze steadily when she asks, "Do you think about it when you play?"

Stiles looks at the board, his white stones boxing-in squares. He can still hear the taunts after Scott had dragged him out of the creature's clutches, after Stiles had mistakenly thought his game with the fox was over: _"…The hospital. The Sheriff's station, and now, the animal clinic."_

Sighing, Stiles nudges another pieces into place. "I never stop thinking about it."

____________________________________

It's called the encircling game. The point of it is to surround a greater area of the board than your opponent. Whenever Stiles plays chess with his dad his strategy is always to sacrifice his pawns. His queen, his knights, his bishops – he can't afford to have those taken.

When Stiles plays Gō, he can't afford to keep only one strategy. He refuses to be so predictable.

____________________________________

He tapes a map of Beacon Hills to his wall. It covers the puncture marks from the thumb tacks and pins. Careful, he marks everyone's houses, from Malia's place near the Reserve to Derek's loft and Chris' apartment; he marks the hospital and the Sheriff's station and Deaton's clinic. He marks the Nemeton.

These are his territories.

He sketches out the lay lines, adds significant locations like First National Bank and Eichen House, places that have centered in past disturbances and might have some unknown power of their own. He marks any part of town that might be useful strategically.

"What are you up to?" his dad asks when Stiles cracks open a brand new notebook and starts writing.

"Self assigned summer project." 

His dad peers over his shoulder and grunts. 

Stiles makes a legend for his map, makes a reference grid in his notebook, and then he breaks down each location separately and in depth. He creates a defensive plan for each one should it ever be attacked. His plans for the hospital and the station have a number of contingencies based on whether outside help in the form of police, firemen and the like can be expected, and whether or not that help is advisable.

Then he creates a different plan, which he calls his Armageddon Alternative, which sacrifices certain territories to safeguard other larger and more important ones in the case of an extreme threat. He applies everything he has learned from Mrs. Yukimura and the nogitsune and Deaton and Chris, and dad, and from his own studying and the game of Go. He looks at everything from two differing perspectives: safeguarding the people he cares about and, more long term, ensuring they have safe ground to run to and to fight back from.

____________________________________

"You do not play like a seventeen year old boy," Noshiko comments softly.

"Hm?" He looks up from the board, feels a bit like he's pulling himself up from out of a dream.

"My daughter is very clever, and I have been teaching her this game when I can. But she plays as a teenager would. As a novice would."

The steady look that she's giving makes him remember what she is, nine hundred years old and a fox. Stiles rolls his shoulders and carefully stares at the board. "Well, that's probably because I research strategy a lot, you know, when I'm back home."

He risks a glance in her direction and she's smiling softly. "You don't play like someone who has merely memorized tactics. You have _kiai_ , fighting spirit."

Stiles hasn't won a game yet, but he refuses to stop playing. 

"It offered," he finds himself saying, his reluctance to talk about any of this so strong that his throat actually constricts, he has to force the words up past his lips and every one of them is a struggle. "It said, if I could beat it in a game it would let me go. Let everyone go." He clears his throat, takes a sip of his tea. "I tried for chess but … actually," he admits with a dark laugh. "I tried to tempt it into an exciting game of lacrosse first."

He remembers it too clearly, the horrible realization that whatever he did wouldn't matter, that he'd already lost. Remembers how it had been something Ms. Morrell had told him once a small age ago, about holding on, buying more time: "If it's about survival, isn't a little agony worth it?" He'd tried to hold on to that as he'd played, the idea that all he had to do was buy more time. Even if he couldn't win, if he could just play well enough to give Scott and the others a chance to figure this out, it might be enough.

"One day soon," Noshiko says, her palm resting lightly atop his hand. "You should play the black."


End file.
